Monday, October 26, 2015

People
ask all the time for tips on how to pass the entrance exam. I can’t tell you the answers or give you a
formula to follow that will help you pass, but I can give you some ideas of the
way Leapforce wants you to think about webpages. They are looking for people who can follow
detailed instructions, turn off their own biases and analyze webpages based on
the guidelines you are given.

To be
successful as a Leapforce agent you can’t look at the internet the same way as
a casual user; you have to try to understand what the user wants to see when
they issue a query, you then have to try to understand what the creator of the
webpage intended to convey, then analyze how well the webpage served the
user. To do that well you have to dig
deeper and think more critically than the casual user.

Here are
some of what I believe to be the most important mental qualities for a
Leapforce agent:

Understanding
– ability to get inside the head of the user.
Probably the hardest part of evaluating search results is figuring out
what the user wants when they type in a query.
Some queries are straightforward and easy to understand; others are
vague or outright impossible to grasp.
How do you interpret something like this (a query I actually had to
rate): “Knuckles when I was young”? How
about: “je”? Or: “anchors tow”? Your job is to figure out the most likely interpretation
of these queries. Sometimes it’s an
individual thing and you can’t figure it out, sometimes if you play around with
words a little you can find something online that is similar and may be what the
user meant. You have to use your
imagination and understanding of people to try to work out these puzzles.

Skepticism.
Don’t trust everything you read on the internet. You have to be skeptical about every website
you visit. Does it really have the
authority to make its claims? For instance,
I was rating a page by a “Dr” about uses of an herbal supplement. I tried to find out what kind of doctor he
is, there was nothing on the site stating his qualifications or even if he
really is a doctor. If you can’t find
that information, what does it say about him?
To me it says he’s not the kind of doctor we would want to take advice
from.

Attention
to detail. Does the page give the user
the latest information or is it outdated?
Is it about the latest version of the software or device the user is
asking about? Is there something else
with a similar name that is not showing up on the search results, but may be what the user wants? If the user gave very specific details in the query, do the results match exactly?

Curiosity
– willingness to dig deeper to understand the query, willingness to go beyond
the search results that are given to see if there is something even better. What would happen if you search for it a
slightly different way?

I hope
this will help those of you about to take the exam, or those thinking about
applying. This is the way Leapforce
hopes you will be thinking when you work for them. Good luck in your efforts.

About Me

I'm a library paraprofessional with a Master's Degree in Psychology, researcher, blogger and part-time webpreneur. Working for state government is not as secure as it used to be, so supplemental income is needed. I'm investigating and trying out a number of work-at-home ideas that I'll be discussing in Leaving Low Wages. Because we get stuck from time to time, I've started Action Does It so we can all learn some motivational techniques together.
Your comments are welcome, the more people we have contributing ideas the smarter we all will be.